Karate Tournament!

Yes, I'm a bit far behind again.  Life is, shall we say, crazy right now.  This was a fun day though.  Little One's very first karate tournament!  She was SO nervous (I've never actually seen her that nervous before) but so brave.  I was so proud of my Little One!  She signed up to compete in kata, self defense and flag sparring.

Before they began, waiting nervously

Slightly warming up.  She had a very, very nice judge.

Waiting her turn

This is the beginning of her kata.

Getting her scores.  I couldn't get all three of them all at once.  The boy to the left is in our ward.  It was fun to have him help out with her group.

Here is a video of her kata.  She had this down cold, but kept forgetting where she was at in competition.

Some of her self defense moves.

Flag sparring,  This part she had a blast with.

Here is a video of her sparring up until she got the first flag.  They were pretty easy on both kids.  The boy kept shielding his flag with his arm so she had no chance of getting it (later on.)  Little One though, kept turning around so he couldn't get it.  They're both new at it and both had a blast.  That's what was important.  It was so fun watching them!

Phew!  All done!

Medal time!

I love the look on my dad's face in this one. :)

Here she is with one of her teachers, Mr. Lawrence.

And, Mr. Jade.

Of course, with Mama.

This is the cool shirt for the tournament.  I loved the design!

Silver (flag sparring), Participation, Bronze (kata)

Science and History

Here are some more of those projects.  Science first.  We're doing astronomy and earth science this year.  Totally my year.  This is the only branch of science that I actually like.  I especially loved doing the moon with her because someday I'm going to go there.  Here we did the phases of the moon with Oreos.  I thought the Halloween ones would be fun for a more "harvest moon" look. :)

Here is Mom with her, showing where to cut the filling out.

Next we have history.  In our section on China she made a bowl.

First she formed it out of air dry clay.

Next she painted it.

Then we sprayed it so it was nice and shiny.

We also made a "jade" necklace.  We found as close to a jade color of sculpy clay as we could find, rolled it into little balls, stuck them on toothpicks with Vaseline so they'd come back off, and baked them.  It turned out pretty cute!

Gotta love the pose.

She also did a crown of the Empress Theodora from the Byzantine Empire.

Last, but not least we tried making a boomerang when we were learning about Australia.  It didn't look like a regular boomerang, but it was fun anyway.

Halloween!

Little One and her friends all got together to go trick-or-treating.  It was an adorable bunch!  The weather was beautiful.  While not quite as nice as Las Vegas or North Carolina, it was gorgeous for Utah.  As we waited for everyone to show up she decided to rake some leaves into a pile and jump in.  She had a blast!

The cute kiddos!

Patrice and the kids dropped by for awhile too.  We love those cute faces so much!

Wrapper and all.

Uncle Mark and Aunt Carol's

Over UEA weekend we took off to visit with my Aunt and Uncle (my mom's brother.)  They live about 3 1/2-4 hours away so it was a nice drive, but not nearly as long as going to visit my grandma.  We read some books along the way as well as watched a movie.  We didn't end up taking off until Friday afternoon so we got there about dinner time.  Aunt Carol had yummy pork chops cooking and we had a nice visit that night.

Saturday my Aunt Madge (my grandma's sister) and her daughter, Tina, brought Arianna over to play with Karissa for a couple of hours.  Arianna is my Aunt Madge's son's daughter and is a year older than Karissa.  How's that for confusing?  It took the girls a little to be comfortable with each other but once they were they ran around outside and played.  That night we got to watch Avengers with their surround sound...awesome!  The remodel of their house turned out beautiful.

Sunday we tried to go to church, but it must have been stake conference or something because neither building had anybody there.  We went back to the house and visited some more until about lunch time and then came home so the girls could get to bed on time for school the next day.

It was a wonderful weekend!  Especially seeing the girls help Aunt Carol out with decorating cupcakes and playing game after game with her.  I love my family!!

Making the frosting.  Yummy!

Aunt Carol needs to have things gluton free so it was yummy trying her cupcakes and muffins.

Little One coloring with my cousin, Tina

Aunt Madge and Arianna

Tina and I were trying to get a picture of them but they weren't wanting it. :)

Corn Maze!

I took the girls down to one of the best corn mazes in town a couple of weeks ago.  This is the place we went last year and it was still a blast.  I didn't think we were going to be able to do the actual corn maze part of things because Little One was scared.  She hadn't liked being lost last year.  I told her if she wanted to try it out that was great, but she needed to let me know because I wasn't going to ask her about it.  Sure enough, part way into it she wanted to check out the kiddie maze.  She led Ira and I through it and decided it was fun so she wanted to do the regular maze.  She led us through that one too and we made it out without being nervous.  Success!

They had the princess area again so she had to try out a couple of dresses.

This was kinda fun and she liked going around and around.

Ira was much more of a spectator this year.  I went sliding with Little One and she just watched.  I think she decided she was too "grown up."

This one all three of us did though.

Here we are in the actual maze.  Little One insisted that last year the corn was green.  I told her no, corn mazes are all dry and yellow like this.  Well, as I was looking at last year's pictures I saw green corn stalks so I had to go let her know she'd been right.  The joys of being a mom. :)

Sorry, my camera lens has scratches for one thing and I got sunspots for another.  Still a cute one of us though.

Little One wanted to take a picture of us.

They really liked this area with huge lincoln logs.

And, of course, the big jumping pillows!  It was hard for me to get a good shot while I was being bounced around.

So fun!  We can't wait to go again next year!